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The MEMS monthly e-newsletter shares information about events, conferences, calls for papers, student and faculty work in the field, and digital resources that enrich our understanding of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. If you have questions about the minor, contact Co-Directors Professor Amy Froide (froide@umbc.edu) and Professor Susan McDonough. If you have any items you would like to share in the newsletter, please send them to Laurel Bassett at lburgg1@umbc.edu by the 13^th of each month.

MEMS EVENTS

Thursday, March 17, 12:15 PM, Online. Sex Workers, But No Sex: Prostitutes, Notaries, and the Communities They Built an installment of Mini-MEMS Lunch and Learns

Mini-MEMS Lunch and Learns are opportunities for professors working in Medieval and Early Modern Studies to informally share their work through brief presentations followed by Q and A sessions. Professor Susan McDonough in History will lead our March session.

Sex Workers, But No Sex: Prostitutes, Notaries, and the Communities They Built

This presentation, with Professor Susan McDonough, brings together two Mediterranean institutions, legalized prostitution and the notariat, to explore how the region’s sex workers collaborated with notaries to establish their belonging within their communities. Despite the social stigma surrounding prostitution and legal limitations on prostitutes’ movements, prostitution was both legal and widespread in the Northern Mediterranean. Equally widespread was the use of notaries: people in the Northern Mediterranean relied on notaries to document their debts, procuratorships, business arrangements, and final wishes. Dr. McDonough will share some notarial documents from different Mediterranean archives and we can think together about what they suggest about sex workers’ enmeshment in their communities.

Join Webex meeting

ID: 26229982017
Password: gsYPB2HJG26

Check out the recordings of our recent Mini-MEMS presentations on our website: www.mems.umbc.edu. These include: Did You Know the Aeneid Has a Sequel? Renaissance Addendum!, Law and Order in Ancient Rome and Beyond, and ‘Scarcely one without defect’: Imagined Beauty in the Venetian Ospedali Grandi. Also a special thank you to Dr. Timothy Phin for last month’s presentation.

Sunday, April 24 1 PM Henry V: Pre-Show Talk with Dr. Froide (History) and 2 PM Performance with Chesapeake Shakespeare Company

The epic final installment of Shakespeare’s Henriad comes to CSC’s downtown Baltimore theatre for the first time. Young, brash Prince Hal may have ascended to his rightful place on the throne, but has he grown into a man worthy of being King Henry V? Before he can rule a nation—let alone conquer another—he must prove himself, not just as a leader of men, but one of them. Armed with some of the most powerful lines in the Bard’s arsenal, Henry and his “band of brothers” will battle against all odds.

Chesapeake Shakespeare Company is pleased to host Dr. Froide for a preshow discussion at 1 pm before the April 24^th performance.  In connection with the pre-show talk, CSC is offering UMBC faculty and students $24 (half price) seats for the performance. You can reserve seats online or by calling the box office at 410-244-8570 and using the code UMBCHenry. This is an in-person event—as of the writing of this newsletter, you will need to bring proof of vaccination and wear a mask. Chesapeake Shakespeare Company is located at: 7 South Calvert Street Baltimore, MD 21202. The code UMBCHenry is good for April 24^th’s performance only. Once you have selected which section to sit in, choose your seat from the BASIC price level or the green colored seats online. This will add them to your cart. You will then select if you want your tickets emailed to you, or if you prefer to have them held at will-call. Then click NEXT. On the following screen, enter the discount code UMBCHenry. This will apply the discount and unlock the $24 ticket price.

ON CAMPUS EVENTS

Wednesday, April 13, 4-5:30 PM, Online The History Department presents the Low Lecture: Slavery and the Problem of Memory and Public History, a Web Ex presentation with Dr. Ana Lucia Araujo

This lecture will be based on the book Slavery in the Age of Memory: Engaging the Past by Dr. Ana Lucia Araujo, Professor of History at Howard University. Exploring notions of history, collective memory, cultural memory, public memory, official memory, and public history, Slavery in the Age of Memory: Engaging the Past explains how ordinary citizens, social groups, governments, and institutions engage with the past of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. It illuminates how and why over the last five decades the debates about slavery have become so relevant in the societies where slavery existed and which participated in the Atlantic slave trade. https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/history/events/101348/join_meeting

COMMUNITY EVENTS

March 20, 1-4 PM, In person. The Walters Art Museum hosts Women’s History Month In-Person Wikipedia Edit-a-thon.

Join a collective Wikipedia edit-a-thon and increase information about women and gender nonbinary artists in the Walters Art Museum’s collection. Whether you are new to editing Wikipedia pages or a frequent contributor, this program will provide training and resources to increase your knowledge of both Wikipedia editing and the Walters collection. This program will begin with training on editing, fact-checking, and research process followed by open-ended participation. Museum curators will be available beginning at 2 pm to respond to questions about the collection. Please bring your own laptop to participate. For questions, reach out to publicprograms@thewalters.org. To sign up for the event, see https://thewalters.org/event/wiki-inperson/

March 21-March 27, daily, Online. REMA-European Early Music Network coordinates the Early Music Day Festival

From medieval to classical music, from one performer to a full opera, from well-known masterpieces to secret gems, this week-long program offers the best experience of Early Music. The concerts are released on their webpage and available for 24 hours. Don’t miss the chance to chat live with the artists during premiere time. Of particular interest is the March 23 offering: Like a Woman: Finding the Feminine in Medieval France. This program features 15^th-century French songs from the feminine poetic perspective. These pieces provide a counternarrative to the pedestals and pitfalls of courtly love. To access concerts, see: https://www.earlymusicday.eu/emd-festival-2022/

Friday, March 25, 12 PM Central, Online. The Newberry’s Center for Renaissance Studies presents A Career in Critical Race Studies: Ayanna Thompson

In this conversation, professors Ayanna Thompson (Arizona State University) and Noemie Ndiaye (University of Chicago) discuss Thompson’s career exploring the historical development and impact of race in scholarship, on the stage, and through the RaceB4Race collective. This program is a part of Race in Dialogue, a series of virtual conversations on medieval and early modern critical race studies and Indigenous studies. To attend the event, see the zoom link at https://www.newberry.org/03252022-career-critical-race-studies-ayanna-thompson

Friday, April 1, 6:30 pm, Online. The Ohio State University’s Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies presents: Lisa Klein and Semi Chellas: “Ophelia: From Book to Film”

Have you ever wondered how adaptations of novels make their way from the printed page to Hollywood studios? Join the OSU Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies on Friday, April 1, to hear from author Lisa Klein (Ophelia) and screenwriter Semi Chellas (Mad Men, The Romanoffs) as they discuss the journey of Klein’s novel of the Hamlet story from Ophelia’s point of view to the big screen. For full event details and registration visit: http://go.osu.edu/ophelia

PAPERS AND CONFERENCES

Call for Papers-Multilingual Dynamics of Medieval Literature in Western Europe, Utrecht University, September 21-23, 2022

The medieval world was by no means monolingual. Languages flourished and grew, circulated, and travelled across geo-political frontiers. This was true of vernacular languages and especially so for Latin, a cosmopolitan language par excellence. What were the stakes and consequences of multilingualism through cultural, social, artistic, or material lenses? We invite proposals for 20 minute papers addressing any aspect of medieval literature and literary culture. Possible topics of interest include but are not limited to court and urban communities and their languages, contact zones, genre, and linguistic frontiers. We welcome proposals from scholars at all career stages—and from all disciplinary backgrounds. It is our intention to hold the conference in person in Utrecht and the working language will be English. Speakers may be invited after the conference to contribute to a book of essays, which we hope to publish in Open Access in early 2023. Proposals of no more than 250 words should be sent to the project team at multilingualdynamics@gmail.com by April 1, 2022. For further information, visit: https://multilingualdynamics.sites.uu.nl/.

Call for Papers-98^th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America, The Grand Hyatt, Washington, DC February 23-26, 2023

The conference program will feature sessions highlighting innovative scholarship across the disciplines contributing to medieval studies. With the recent turn towards the Global Middle Ages and the newfound reliance upon transnational digital exchange during the global pandemic, the hosts of MAA 2023 invite fellow medievalists to examine medieval studies in an international context and to consider the necessity of embedding medieval studies in the American academy in a globalized and decentered world. This approach also invites critical reflection on the entanglement of medieval studies in narratives of nationalism, colonialism, and racism. Specific themes that might be addressed include Migrations and Movements, Transportation and Trade, Digital Medieval Studies, Religious Encounters, Translation, Translators, and Multilingualism and Foreign Service in the Middle Ages. The deadline for submissions is June 1, 2022. For further information, see:  https://www.medievalacademy.org/page/2023AnnualMeeting

DIGITAL RESOURCES

Scroll on over to the Music Department’s Home Page for access to the blog: African Influence on New World Music

In this blog, Miles Malone explores the connections between New World Music and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, discussing Afro-Latin instruments, rhythmic ideas, and the diffusion of African music throughout the New World. https://music.umbc.edu/?id=117579

Hill Museum and Manuscript Library Creates New Database to Assist Scholars of Understudied Manuscript Traditions 

Because of HMML’s focus on materials historically underrepresented in western scholarship, the scale of HMML’s collections, and its investment in preservation technology, HMML is uniquely positioned to build the scholarly infrastructure that currently does not exist for many traditions. This service-focused scholarship will in turn broaden the impact of digital preservation efforts around the world. Created as part of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the https://haf.vhmml.org/ (HMML Authority File) is an open-access database that will support librarians and scholars around the world to recognize previously unknown contributors to manuscripts; differentiate authors and texts that had been treated homogeneously; reunited separated materials; and trace the migration of handwritten texts across religious traditions and geographic, political, and linguistic divides.  For more information, consult: www.HMML.org.

For ongoing digital updates from the Medieval (academic) world, check out #medievaltwitter, #shakeRace, and #raceB4Race.

For more information, please join the Medieval and Early Modern Studies Group: https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/mems and see our website: www.mems.umbc.edu

Undergraduate Research Awards (URAs) provide up to $1,500 to undergraduate students to support their research, scholarship, or creative work with a UMBC faculty mentor on an original project. UMBC students of all years and disciplines are invited to apply, as long as they remain enrolled at UMBC long enough to complete the proposed work. Applications require a research proposal and mentor statement of support.

Applications are now being accepted. Go to:

ur.umbc.edu/ura

Deadline: May 2, 2022

For info on how to write a winning proposal see:

https://ur.umbc.edu/ura/forms/

Questions? aprilh@umbc.edu

We look forward to you joining our UMBC community this spring in celebrating
the transformative leadership of President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, and the launch
of the Hrabowski Endowment for Student Excellence, a scholarship honoring his legacy.

Until then, we invite you to share a message with Dr. Hrabowski.